Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain’s excerpt from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a high-level comedy that uses a comic character and a comic situation to show that chores not viewed as work or duty can be enjoyable. The excerpt of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer shows a lazy, deceiving persona of Tom Sawyer who gets others to do his work for him. In this case he gets someone else to whitewash a fence with a long-handled brush for him. Tom Sawyer also tries to make the chore seem more intriguing to the victim by saying things like, “Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence everyday?”(SB p. 271) In addition he challenges the other kids manhood by saying he probably couldn’t do it anyway. Saying things that would upset the kid or make him desire to do it on his own
free will. Saying things like, “I reckon there ain’t one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it’s got to be done.”(SB p. 271) Things that make the other kid feel like if he can do the chore the right way that he’ll be special, that he is special because he can do something that most people can’t when really it’s just a common chore that someone's to lazy to do themself. The irony is that Tom Sawyer himself hates to do chores and would never stop fighting so that he wouldn’t have to do them, but makes other people do the thing he hates and most people hate. In conclusion Tom Sawyer is a deceiving, conniving, lazy boy that ends up helping people see a new perspective on chores and work that will benefit them in the long run.